Teenage boys will love it; you will lament the shortcomings

Rating: 4/10 (11 August 2013)

Uuuuhh... So I had a few hours to waste with a friend while we were at a music festival, and walked into town to watch whatever was offered. 'Pacific Rim' became our choice. I like many movies by Guillermo del Toro, so it had at least some premise. Expectations were not met.
The movie is a visual roller-coaster-ride, especially in 3D as we watched it. But that is all this movie has going for it. The plot is a poorly hidden copy of 'Independence Day' but with more flaws and inconsistency; the monsters are pretty much Godzilla meets The Host and the protagonists' robots are little but oversized Transformers. Nothing new under the sun. Some scenes are pretty much taken straight out of ID4, including the grand finale, but for some reason it still falls short of the previous movie even though we have 17 years of CGI and special effects development time. This goes to show that relying on effects at the cost of acting and plot does not make a good movie.
The actors are pretty bland. Guillermo del Toro frequently casts Ron Perlman, and this movie is no exception, and his character is not surprisingly the most entertaining even though he receives few minutes of screen time. Stereotypes prevail, another nuisance to someone past their teens. You have the Russian no-nonsense team, the angry scots/brits, the Asian martial arts team and finally the all-American team (yes, admittedly the Asian girl replaces the black guy eventually, but the setting was there).
Plot holes, stupid decisions, unrealistic characters and scientific inacurracies also serve to derail this sci-fi wreck of a train: Why choose such a vulnerable control system? How can the creatures all be clones with so different appearances, sizes, abilties? How can a makeshift lab be enough to facilitate synchronization between human and alien mind? What did the monsters use to track down a single scientist in the middle of a crowd of thousands? And why was that scientist in particular targeted - if they "read his mind" as I assume they did, they would not waste time on terminating that harmless individual. Why are the characters so emotionally driven in moments which require utmost rationality and to be able to overlook personal vendettas? Why does the world government (UN?) stop funding a working defensive program (not to mention: how can money be an issue in the face of annihilation)?
So many questions, so few answers. A 4/10 for the visual thrill of the year, but if 3D and huge monsters does not work on you they will not save the experience for you either.